I hate change.
Hate may actually be a strong word; I’ll compromise and say that I don’t deal well with change. I’m even worse at fully recognizing the severity of a problem. I mean, it makes sense (I think) for a recent college grad to feel lost and and unsure about what’s next, and cling on to the sort of rock-in-the-stomach nostalgia that seems to attack during the “in-between” periods of life. It makes less sense for a sophomore in college to be depressed because he has to go home and work for the summer, yet I’ve managed to cultivate a healthy portion of that post-semester homesickness.
This is by no means a new experience. As a veteran camp-attendee, and later camp counselor, I know how this gut-wrenching sensation begins in the waning hours before the close of a summer. It starts slowly, maybe when the first staff member leaves a couple days early. It’s rare that there will be tears at this point , but as they pull out of the parking lot and the rest of the staff goes back to work, there is a noticeable tug from somewhere in the depths of your stomach. It’s like that well-dressed, slightly off guy in a coffee shop; you don’t want to acknowledge him, but you have a brooding sense that he is going to come up to you later and ask for money for his campaign to save every single abused animal on the planet. At the moment you just want to enjoy your drink and your book, but you can’t fully enjoy it because you know later you’ll have to deal with a prolonged awkward conversation.
That’s what this nostalgia is like. I really wanted to fully enjoy my last few days of this semester, but the well-dressed man always stopped me just shy of it, because I knew I would have to deal with him later. And the awkwardness of this meeting isn’t just that the well-dressed man is asking for money; at its heart, what this nostalgia is asking is for is help in meeting an unrealistic goal. Doesn’t matter who you are, saving EVERY single animal on the planet just isn’t going to happen. In the same way, letting fond memories of a period in your life overwhelm you to the point of despair is just silly. It’s unrealistic to compare what’s ahead to what’s behind, thinking that there’s is no way your future will ever live up to the experiences of a single semester of college.
The worst part is that while all of this is happening, you know it. I know that it’s unrealistic to compare my summers to my falls and springs, but I just can’t get all of the memories that made my last semester so great out of my head. With those memories comes a good feeling, of course, but it is quickly eclipsed by an aching longing for everyone and everything that contributed to those good memories. An example is my dorm room and college food; there’s no way in hell I prefer either of those to four months worth of home cooked meals and my own bed in my own room, but as we pulled away from the front door my mind was assaulted by images of every single thing that my suitemates and I had ever done there, and I was loathe to leave.
It took me awhile to realize that it wasn’t the things or the places or even the memories that made my semester what it was, it was the people.
I’m writing this all after having pulled myself from the dregs of this melancholy, after I’ve had time to settle in and remember why home is incredible in its own right. That being said, what’s ahead is still unclear, and there are some aspects of this summer that I’m frankly scared about. First is the fact that it’s been five years since I’ve had a summer at home. Between working staff at camp and playing on a traveling baseball team, my summers have traditionally been extremely busy, and I’ve had little time to think about or plan next steps. This summer presents and entirely different opportunity (it’s taken me a while to see it as an opportunity) in that I will be able to work and make money and live at home for its entirety. Not scary in itself, but I have a feeling it’ll be a little dose of what life will be like after college. Mmmmmm, reality.
This leads into my second fear: boredom. Working full time, 40 hours a week is something I imagine a lot of students will experience at some point in their college careers, but I never imagined it would take so much time. As ridiculous as that sounds, upon arriving home I dreaded going to work, stuck in the mentality that it was going to become my life. At least if I would have stayed in Spokane, I would have my friends to hang out with outside of work, I thought. And I wouldn’t be working ten hour days. After high school, I find that people spread out too much to retain anything they may have had in common. I have my best friends, like anyone, and we’ll hang out for certain, but I had several days where quantity triumphed quality with regards to friends. At college, I could see ten plus people I knew walking to class. At home, it was the same 7 or so coworkers every day, with the occasionally night at a pal’s to season things up. Mmmmm, the grind.
Finally, I’m scared of the length of the summer. I have, as of now, 4 whole months until I can return to my sphere of comfort. Remember when I was talking about being unrealistic? Jokes aside, the perceived length of the summer has a lot to do with the people I met and formed relationships with over the course of the school year. I think in the back of my mind and many people’s minds is the fear of change–the fear that relationships won’t feel quite the same as they did when we left. You could take this up a notch and involve romantic relationships, but that is an area in which I am neither well versed nor competent. In reality, the summer will probably pass faster than the school year; and when I’m cramming for finals I’ll wonder why I didn’t take it all in when I could.
Mmmmm, taking things for granted.
So, to bring this around, here’s the plan: As a person who’s interested in journalism, I initially thought to start a blog in order to practice my news writing over the summer in the absence of opportunity for an internship or anything similar. I’ll be an editor at the school paper in the fall, and would very much like to avoid a rusty start.
But the more I struggled with this overwhelming nostalgia and coming home, I started to wonder if I couldn’t use a blog to explore my own observations and thoughts about life. I mean, I can’t be the only one who suffers from Unreasonable-Longing-for-College Syndrome, or alternatively, Longing to Get Out of this Stupid School and go Home Disease. The question then would be: why do people feel this way? What is it about the social nature of the college community that draws its members in so deeply that leaving leaves a hole in the heart?
Those are rhetorical questions. I really don’t know.
I do know that before me lies a summer where I’ll get the chance to work with my father more than any other time in my life, learn technical profession skills AND make money. Working ten hours a day equals three day weekends, which equals plenty of time to hang out with friends or do something like, I don’t know, start a blog. And I’ll be playing a TON of ultimate frisbee, which will probably net me a dozen new friends. I get to be best man at my best friend’s wedding. There will be late night video game sessions, pipe smoking, camping and guitar to boot. Maybe I’ll even volunteer.
Who knows. I’m starting to have a funny feeling that when September rolls around, I’ll feel that familiar tug of longing–but this time, I think it might be for home.
Field Notes 